Max Schreck as the vampire Count Orlok (formerly Dracula), being destroyed by sunlight in the movie. Sorry for the spoiler.
Photograph: Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Sundance 2015 review: The Witch – a focus on themes over plot elevate it to near greatness

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What is that strange creaking and scratching noise you hear? Is it an ancient coffin slowly being opened? Or is the sound of a barrel being scraped? Probably the former, as just one remake in almost 100 years might permit a second attempt.

The director Robert Eggers, whose period-set child abduction thriller The Witch had critics quaking in the aisles at Sundance this year, will write and direct a remake of the expressionist horror classic Nosferatu.

That film was an adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, with names and details tweaked, some of which reverted to the original source for Werner Herzog’s 1979 version starring Klaus Kinski.